


Narrowed Correspondence

by renaissancepalette



Series: Dancing With a Stranger (visual & performance arts marvel au) [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dance, Alternate Universe - Different First Meeting, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Artist Steve Rogers, Ballerina Peggy Carter, Dancing, Dancing Lessons, Developing Relationship, Domestic, Domestic Fluff, Domestic Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, F/M, First Meetings, Friendship, Friendship/Love, MCU AU Fest, Mentioned Sam Wilson - Freeform, Minor Steve Rogers/Sam Wilson, Modern Steve Rogers, Past Relationship(s), Peggy Carter Lives, Platonic Relationships, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers & Sam Wilson Friendship, Steve Rogers Feels, Swing Dancer Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 05:53:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18309503
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renaissancepalette/pseuds/renaissancepalette
Summary: Over time, they’ve grown close and developed into what could be labeled as friends: they’ve hugged on multiple occasions but still whenever they walk side-by-side, Steve itches to hold her hand. He wishes to hold her close in his arms and intimate. He thinks about it every time. And just like every time, he remains quiet and cordial.She takes his hand this time, for the first time—and Steve’s heart leaps and soars and he’s blushing madly, hopelessly—and is 290% sure she can hear his heartbeat thundering as she leads him to the middle of the room and turns to face him, their fingers entwine.The slow music echoes off the empty walls. She places a hand on his shoulders, straightens his back, and talks him through making a relieve and saute move.





	Narrowed Correspondence

**Author's Note:**

> **I have done other fic involving other characters on my tumblr**  
> 
>  
> 
> **This fic involves the start and history of the relationship between ballerina Peggy and freelance artist Steve. It includes their meeting, friendship, Steve’s disappearance and his sudden return.**

**I.**

The first time Steve shows up on Margaret “Peggy” Carter's doorstep, he’s a shambolic, bloodied mess; it was an hour before she’s to leave the empty dance studio building and being the well-trained, courageous woman she is, upon hearing a heavy hand on the locked glass door of the empty studio, she opens it with one hand on the trigger of her portable stun gun.

The man is younger than her, early-twenties, _maybe_ , she thinks; light haired and fair skinned and is the kind of skinny that would prompt concern with the echoes of desiring to “fatten him up” by some. He’s short-limbed, angular, and bruised—high cheekbones turning deep purple and blue, scabbed-over bony knuckles are dirty and oozing carmine red, and he’s out of breath, the polite smile he tries to give is more of a wince tainted with blood.

“Hi, ma'am,” he greets, and his voice is deeper than she’s expecting. He swallows and Peggy blinks, startled alone by his presence but also startled to realize she hadn’t been _blinking_ before that gust of wind and rainwater sprays in her face.

Lowering the device in her hand, she listens to him ask, near bashfully, as if he’s embarrassed, if he there is a restroom he could occupy.

Wordlessly, Peggy shows him where and doesn’t speak her curiosity of whether he’d managed to keep all his teeth in his fight.

The restroom door to the studio’s single male restroom locks. Peggy has a number dialed into her phone, ready to call if need be. She activates the safety and pockets the stun gun in its holster.

Peggy had _just_ inherited this dance studio from her predecessor, co-owning it with another, and tonight she has plans to meet with a friend for drinks. The last of her class of bumbling feet and gangly legs of clumsy adolescents left not even forty minutes prior.

As she waits for her guest to finish, Peggy exchanges her leotard and leather ballet shoes for jeggings and sneakers. Through her reflection in the dressing room mirror, the plain  purple scruntchie moves from her hair to wrapped around her right wrist; she pulls out her cellphone, opens the messaging app and taps out a warning to her friend, Angie Martinelli, that she will be late to the restaurant.

The stranger exists her studio’s restroom then, dabbing a damp paper towel on his face, and it’s the first time Peggy _sees_ his face, now clear of blood and gravel grit: tussled blonde-brown hair, disheveled collar, and a lingering, perpetually distinct scent of wet leather and soap. There’s a paper-thin cut across his cheek still slightly bleeding and he has to frequently swallow down the blood from his gums.

No less defensive, Peggy hands over a first aid kit retrieved from her office and offers to pay him a Lyft home. The man turns it down with a politeness of an old fashion demeanor, flashes a boyish smile and her fingers twitch, her nostrils flare, and she inhales a large amount of air, his air, and in comes creeping back is the waning longing to have a stick between her fingers and taking a drag from that instead.

Rather than returning his politeness with an objection or question, Peggy leaves him with a first aid kit in his hands and informs that her studio has already closed for the night. She waits for him in the chairs along the opposite wall, a thumb rubbing across the material of her stun gun’s holster, the other’s thumb running across her teeth and watches him. And then he breaks the silence with a statement about his fear of needles drastically constructing with his head-first instinct of jumping into fights.

When he looks up, expecting a reaction—a chuckle, a smile—she’s only quietly watching him without a crack of a enthusiasm.

“That’s how you got that then?”

He flexes a hand, the knuckles covered in bandaids. “Yeah. I got jumped.” When he finishes, his face glistens from antibiotic ointment and bandaids.

“Hm.” She pauses. “What for?”

“I like your taste in bandaids.” He smiles at the shooting star and planet designs across his right knuckles. One bandaid is under his left cheekbone. The bleeding onto his teeth has lessened.

Peggy smiles but it’s more in politeness and doesn’t reflect her true feelings of skepticism and curiosity.

She does meet her friend, Angie, for drinks that night thirty minutes late just like she texted. Peggy also tells of the stranger who visited her and he offered to walk with her around the block to her car, admitting he received his injuries from drunk and hateful men passing by. He’d come across the men before when they were harassing a couple in Menorah-patterned sweaters last Christmastime, he told. When she retells this to Angie, it was brushed off to Peggy just having a good year and how she’s still helping people even after changing her career aspirations.

* * *

 

**II.**

The next instance Peggy Carter runs into her stranger is months later at a theater showing of a remastered old film. It was one she grew up watching on repeat during visits with her grandparents and is what that sparked her love for dance. It’s been remastered for a re-release and shes to see it at her earliest convenience.

It’s out in the theater lobby they run into each other, he with a brunette laughing on his arm and Peggy purchasing three candy bars. Stares were shared but introductions were left unused; Peggy quickly unwraps one bar and stuffs a piece into her mouth and hurries to her theater.

When they meet up after the showings, he’s alone (and if Peggy hadn’t known better, would say that he’d been crying). _This time_ Peggy initiates conversation, speaking that it’s good to see him again, that he’s looking considerably better without the blood and bruises. Steve gives a grin, a pinky finger wiping underneath his eyes.

This time their talk longer than ten minutes—it lasts until they’d gotten distracted and have walked a considerable distance from the theater.

She asks about the woman he entered with; he tells that he left alone because she was disappointed about their date as to his phone ringing during the first act, and the final straw being catching him grow “misty eyed” during the conclusion of the romcom.

Surprised but remorseful, Peggy apologizes for the awful evening. He shrugs it off being another bad blind date hooked up by a friend.

Peggy’s able to relate, and while staring off at the pretty pinks and purples of the dying sun, shares brief stories about a coworker from her previous job who wouldn’t stop hitting on her even after a bad casual lunch date.

Steve finds it comforting and amusing about their shared bad luck in dating. Peggy concludes that there’s just _something_ about her that must send out the wrong signal and reeling in the wrong fish.

He thinks the right one just hasn’t come along.

“Well I hope he’ll come along soon. A woman can only wait for so long.”

He can’t come up with a counter and just chuckles.

Approaching a seafood restaurant, Steve offers to buy dinner.

As they enter and are seated, the aromas of steamed crustacean and butter wafting around, she’s asked about her current job—and that’s how he learns she owns the studio he stopped at. His current occupation is a freelance artist, currently illustrating politics for the small-town local newspaper.

* * *

 

**III.**

After a successful dinner date “between _friends_ ,” it’s insisted, and of a few more following, one of the next times Peggy sees Steve Rogers is after a dance performance and he sneaks backstage with an oversized bouquet of red roses. A small camera hangs from his neck which was used to capture photos and clips of when she was on stage.

His attendance was indeed a surprise—and one that was met with Peggy startled and criticizing his poor timing, having seen her messy haired, dabbing a towel at her sweat, and in her pantyhose. And ever the gentleman, Steve turns his back to her,

Back stage, most dancers are comfortable enough with each other to change out in the open but Peggy—Peggy was caught exiting the women’s restroom. She isn’t fully dressed and was leaving the women’s restroom having changed her underclothes. And with a forgiving hand, she informs Steve that he needn’t be so modest. “My shirt is long enough to cover,” she tells, a hand on his shoulder. Pulls him in for a hug.

“They’re lovely,” she compliments, receiving the bouquet and ignorant of his deepening stare studying her features: the flyaways from her ballerina bun lighting up in the cranium like a halo, her faded lipstick that’s an off-color to the roses; the mark of mascara under her right eye; how her blush enhanced her smile over the flowers.

He shakes it off, clears his head, and instead informs he had been on his way to the dressing rooms to wait for her exit.

Due to the inflated ego of the current lead, Peggy doesn’t stay in the dressing rooms for long, Steve will find out later over a dinner that’s “a congratulations dinner and is not really a date”…but it totally is. And then over a titillating game of entranced stares and pool, she’ll tell that it’s also because of a gnarly scar winding from her knee, up her thigh, and curling a small arch towards her spine.

And later still, while over their third round of beers, Steve presents his share of scars, both healed and faintly so.

Instead of marveling, Peggy’s palm ghosted across the off coloring of skin where a deep wound once been, and speaks, “those look awfully dreadful.” Instead of marveling, she gives a statement that sounds more curious than admiration about his battle scars won _for the greater good_. It sounds sad.

* * *

 

**IV.**

He meets Ms. Peggy Carter at her studio for, what he was told, would hold an enjoyable evening that will fulfill a request he made months ago.

Steve would like to admit the frequency he’s imagined the chestnut brown hair and pungent cigarettes smoke faintly perfuming her, and pale skin that shows just a sliver of skin above her pants line or the inviting expanse of her neck when she pulls her hair to the side. Steve would like to, but would never, ever admit the frequency he’s begun daydreaming about Ms. Peggy Carter because, quite frankly, the hotblooded, persistent, and resilient ballerina would just as quickly brandish her knuckles in a fight than she would allow him anywhere near the permission of having the warmth of physical contact.

Over time, they’ve grown close and developed into what could be labeled as _friends_ : they’ve hugged on multiple occasions but still whenever they walk side-by-side, Steve itches to hold her hand. He wishes to hold her like the dancers do: close in his arms and intimate. He thinks about it every time. And just like every time, he remains quiet and cordial.

He can hear his best friend taunting him of his hesitance, reminding that is why Steve hadn’t had his first kiss until after grade school.

He sighs.

When he enters her studio, closed early after her last appointment cancelled, Steve’s baffled, bemused gaze is met with Peggy’s who’s across the marley flooring with a large smile. There’s a movable ash wood barre pulled to the middle of the floor.

“Evening, twinkle toes!”

He’s changed into the appropriate clothing like she ordered. Still confused, he drops his duffel bag by the door in front of the mirrors and watches as she gleefully chasses over to the stereo system shelved in the wall.

“Twinkle toes?”

Slow classical music begins playing through the speakers high in the corners of the room.

“It’s what we all call the new beginners due to their ungainly abilities.”

“Well I beg to differ.”

Her hands on her hips, she’s shoots him a sly, teasing smile full of straight white teeth and cherry-scented glossed lips and he’d—he’d been _enthralled_ until she glides across the polished floor.

“You said so yourself that you have no prior experience in _this art_.” She’s standing toe-to-toe with him, eliminating personal space. Her chin lifted high, taunting smile waning. A slow gaze travels from his straight-lined feet to his powder blue eyes and there’s an intimidation, a counter, a _challenge_ behind hers.

“No—uh—” He clears his throat and has to look away but still _feels_ her watching him. “I’ll have you know,” he starts, arising confidence, “I was one of the top finalists in the state-wide swing dance competition for five years in a row.”

His chest puffs proudly; Peggy sees. Steve’s gaze lowers to hers—confident and surely and more _prepared_ than he could ever be, he knows—and bounces right off, to the mirrored walled encompassing the room, to her hair pinned high on her head, to the speaker high in the right room corner, back to the mirrors, to the wall of windows to his right and he swallows with difficulty; Peggy sees that too.

“With _those feet?_ ” she jokes, remembering the many stories of him not turning enough while running and crashing into shop windows, into walls. “I’d like to see you prove me wrong.”

It’s nearly flirtatious, it all—the close proximity, the way she raises her chin more, simultaneously as in a dare and an invite, the lingering gazes and their breaths seemingly _synch_.

And then she takes his hand this time, for the first time—and Steve’s heart _leaps_ and _soars_ and he’s blushing madly, hopelessly—and is 290% sure she can _hear_ his heartbeat thundering as she leads him to the middle of the room and turns to face him, their fingers entwine. The slow music echoes off the empty walls. She places a hand on his shoulders, straightens his back, and talks him through making a relieve and saute move.

* * *

 

**V.**

Steve is drafted and everything is disrupted.

The half-read novel sits untouched on the side table. A jacket still saturated with his scent hangs in her closet—he’d let her borrow it two nights ago and she hadn’t gotten the chance to return it.

A novelty picture frame hangs on her wall above the plushie Squirtel toy she’d  planned to gift him for his birthday.

For the past several months, the upcoming Swing Dance Competition was the aspiring goal. In between practice, they shared noodle bowl at their favorite Thai restaurant, walks in the park, deep conversations in the late evenings during “sleep overs”, and secret lessons at her studio. These lessons are reserved only for the specific pupils along with super exclusive privileges. These privileges include touches—of his hand cradling the small of her back, her knuckles caressing his jaw, delicate fingers tangled in knots of hair—and of gazes, lingering stares, and close proximity, undeniable, indisputably, and incredible—with heavy breaths blown on cheeks, tasting the acerbic aftertaste of self-regret and pepermint breath mints, that afternoon’s cigarettes, and the acidic remnants of a muggy cup of coffee. It tastes like hope, like prospect, like a secret requited promise stated by the universe. Signed, sent, and presented by destiny.

Steve’s birthday comes, goes, and Peggy gets a sinking, depressed intuition.

Her gifted pendant necklace dangles, slides across the delicate wings of her clavicle. Her fingertips dance across her lips as a remnant; the sunlight filtering in her window fixes on the second mug on a small table, remained unused since its owner’s absence. Wrapped in lush blankets, Peggy stares off at nothing, lost in her own thoughts of all the things she could have said, should have said, would do in another timeline.

Steve goes missing and everything comes to a standstill.

During practice, she’s off: her steps are seconds late and her mind wanders. At her own rehearsals, she’s pulled aside told that she’s putting all her development at risk; it’s putting all the improvement on the line that she’s made throughout the years, and therefore putting her newly acquired lead role in jeopardy.

Peggy thinks about how Steve will miss her starring role that will shoot off her career.

Steve is proclaimed _missing in action_ and Peggy feels that string fashioned by destiny break, wither, and fizz out as if in a fire.

She eats less, sleeps more, cries, smokes, and does nothing but work and practice for the foreseeable future.

But it all finally catches up with her after her performance—the one that would have taken her career off. Should have. But Peggy spent what should have been her encore bow on stage being rushed to the hospital due to dehydration and nutrition.

Her spotlight is taken by hospital bills and visiting hours.

Peggy _does_ get the light she’s spent years working for. And every time before she goes on stage, she looks at the domestic selfies for a mental boost: the one taken of Steve asleep on her side, taken as soon as she awoke and noticed. One of him in the kitchen, dried batter staining the sports logo of his t-shirt. Of them both in summer wear. Of tying on his shoes after ballet practice. Posing proudly with his Swing Dancer Champion trophy in hand, standing beside an award for recreational boxing, for dart throwing (won at a bar), and one for shot taking.

* * *

 

**VI.**

Twelve years later, Ms. Peggy Carter has trophies filling her office shelves and titles attached to her name. She’s been in theaters across the country, fitted into too many costumes and tutus. Has broken or sprained so many toes and ankles.

She’s a well renounced instructor whose reputation is an iceberg-tip of a taste for her strict teaching.

She’s smoking less, has a life again, and is the sole owner of her studio. She has moved on.

Peggy’s still teaching ballet at her studio since returning home, and now has another star pupil she can tell—can bet, can _guarantee_ with a _promise_ —is about to achieve stardom. Luckily Miss Liz Allan-Toomes doesn’t glide through the air or fly across the floor with the same gaucheness as Steve Rogers, so Peggy is quite proud of the headlines in articles: that the public eye alludes to Allan being seen as Ms. Carter’s successor.

It’s over ten years later and Peggy gave up her career after a very accidental near-overdose of prescription medication. And deciding she’s well-passed her fill of travel and stress of it all, she’d ended her ballet career four years early.

It’s been so long, too long, and Peggy runs into Steve Rogers twelve years after she thought he was dead—sees him exiting a recreational center in conversation with a man flanked at his side. Neither appear injured or as an illusion, and the two are even laughing. Steve doesn’t look a day older than the last time she saw him. A _few years_ , she’ll later correct. And he looks taller. Bigger. _Much bigger_. It’s striking and alarming. It’s _unnerving_ ; her skin crawls from her curling toes to her neck's hair standing on end.

And after believing he was dead for years, Peggy drops her ceramic travel mug in the middle of the recreation building’s hallway, encouraging the reflective expressions of both Steve and Sam.

His name slithers out in a strained, croaked whisper of disappear. But hers—the shock when he says her name is as clear as day. And he’s real…dear God he’s _real_ , and he’s _here—_ his touch, his voice, his presence…she can’t believed it!

Over a decade later, Peggy has her first conversation with a ghost.

**Author's Note:**

> [come screech at me in my mailbox](https://parallelmarvel.tumblr.com/)


End file.
